Koban: Rise of the Kobani

by Stephen W Bennett

  When it was explained that this library opening was a side effect of having communicated with the humans via their form of telepathy, the former slaves became most cooperative. As a token of their appreciation, they went along to direct their search for all of the Eight Balls they had been forced to build over the centuries. It was a pleasure for them to see things that had never been used for anything but war, destroyed.

  With Krall resistance quickly eliminated on the planet and by the dome, the rest of the Torki lodge was taken aboard, and a second migration ship was landed to collect the one village of Prada. They were convinced by an elder to come along, just as the Prada at CS2 had been.

  Marlyn came into the Beagle’s infirmary to see the wounded, and lingered by one med lab in particular. “Sarge that was one nutty fine job you did on that station. You really managed to farkle up that bunch of Krall waiting at the door.”

  The nanites in his body had quickly eased his initial pain when he lost his leg at the knee, and now those of the med lab were starting the three-month task of regrowth. He was feeling no pain, and felt rather good about the mission. “Thanks. ‘Twern’t nuthin, Mam. And where’d you learn my home world cuss word, farkle?”

  “From my Poldark husband, you twit. And, don’t say what you did was nothing!” she told him. “We’re going to have to create some sort of medal or an award, just for your actions today. Not to mention the heroics of so many others.”

  “Crap. Marlyn, I don’t want a medal or award. It’ll just mean a promotion to some other position I don't really want. I’m happy as I am.”

  Smiling, she answered, “You can’t mean that! Why there are people who would give an arm and a leg to be a decorated Kobani.” She started to turn away but stopped.

  Looking back she added, “Oh, right... You already did that.” She laughed as she walked out.

  Chapter 20: CS1

  The Mark did its White Out at a thousand miles. It arrived alone, but left a Tachyon Space message for one of the four new clanships. The ship with the largest number of ground attack missiles aboard was instructed to follow him to CS1 as soon as possible. He had received the message about the larger missiles when he arrived at his waypoint. He wanted their firepower to help reduce the domes to rubble. The anti-ship missiles would do considerable damage, but they relied on high speed to hit and kill ships, and delivered less destruction to a dome.

  While Thad watched the sensors for clanships off-planet, he talked. “Tet, do you really think our supply clanships will be that close behind us? The migration ships are probably another two days from the waypoint. Perhaps we should have waited for another clanship. Marlyn and Noreen will have had those available.”

  “Thad, I don’t know that a day delay would matter, this far from the actual war. However, knowing a weapon I would have wanted is almost in my grasp makes me feel more cautious. I know I was prepared to go in exactly the way we’re armed now, but small things can make a difference that you didn’t foresee.” He looked over to Ethan.

  “What do you see on the tarmac of the main habitat dome?” They had luckily emerged over the hemisphere where the main dome was located. It was in an oasis of green, compared to the considerable expanse of gray and brown wastelands of the metal rich planet.

  The drab looking world had been strip mined for many thousands of years, making war materials. Smaller, more easily produced equipment was now made closer to where any war was conducted. However, the more complex and resource hungry ship production stayed put. The powerful two clans that retained the prestige of producing clanships, the backbone of their interstellar war machine, didn’t intend to lose status by giving up that control.

  “Uncle Tet, there are seventeen clanships at that dome. One of them appears to be preparing to depart. It has a ramp down and its portal open. A row of warriors are lined up along each side of the ramp.”

  Mirikami leaned forward in interest. “Put that image on screen. Your description sounds like an honor guard. That could be a high ranking visitor.”

  A zoomed-in image flashed up on the view screen across the Bridge consoles from Mirikami. “I saw an honor guard like that on Koban, when Gatrol Kanpardi came to visit. I don't know if clan leaders get the same sort of honor, or if it’s even a common practice. I see blue, brown and gray uniforms coming out of the closest dome entrance, running to the waiting ship.” He chuckled.

  “I once said I’d pay a week’s pay just to see a damned Krall simply walk some place.”

  Jakob, placed on speaker for convenience, spoke up, when Mirikami would probably have preferred he talk to him through his transducer. “I believe you later told Maggi you would pay a hundred Hub credits to see them walk, right after Kanpardi and his guards left the Flight of Fancy.”

  “Uhh…, thanks Jakob.” They sounded different, but Mirikami knew that the newer AI on the Mark had a full set of Jake’s memory bank data from the Fancy. He could have said that a hundred credits actually was a week’s pay, but then he’d be promptly corrected with a quote of his considerably higher annual pay, divided into the monthly payments to his account, and then divided into weeks. Pick your arguments carefully, he thought, and none at all with an AI. Or with Maggi, he amended.

  Thad had a suggestion. “Tet, do you think this is a chance to take out an important leader at the start of the fight?”

  It was tempting, but Mirikami pulled at his lip, and after a moment said no. “The dome might be on higher alert to impress this visitor, and for all we know one or more of the other clanships could be staffed and ready to go with him. We might get into a shootout we don’t want and may not win. Besides, if this leader safely Jumps out of the system, he’ll report that all was well when he left. If we kill him, someone will come looking for a high status Krall much sooner. If we knockout all the clanships here in a surprise attack, the survivors might sit here for weeks or months before they get a visitor. Let’s wait and watch. We need to complete this orbit anyway, to see what other targets we have.”

  Yet another logical-seeming decision that would have unimagined consequences.

  ****

  Telour was satisfied with his inspection visit. The shipyards themselves were adequate to double production, the infrastructure to increase mining was already present, and an extensive transport system was already available, if they used refurbished older roadways and tracked lines. After all, this world had been under steady resource development and consumption for nearly eighteen thousand years. The Krall didn’t build cities or need consumer goods (unless a mini tank was a work car, and a plasma rifle a credit card). The mineral wealth here was still sufficient for thousands of years of production.

  The only bottleneck to quickly increasing production was the work force. The Torki and Prada bred at a slow pace, and required lengthy training to learn the complex tasks. The living conditions on the polluted world kept reproduction rates lower than on less ravaged planets.

  The solution was trivial. Send one or two migration ships to worlds that had underused lodges and villages, and bring them here. If they died off too soon and were unable to breed quickly enough to repopulate, bring in more. It was just like mining any other resource.

  The Graka clan already controlled multiple worlds with extra slaves that they could relocate within a month or two, using just one or two migration ships. No new factories needed to be built, so within a single orbit of this world, they could increase clanship production to double its current rate. All of the status points would belong to Graca when the joint council finally did the inevitable, and granted Kanpardi the material his additional invasion forces required.

  Economics were simple when you sacrificed things that were unimportant, such as workers, ecosystems and material, and you gained something that did matter, status points for breeding more like yourself.

  He left the dome knowing he had instilled energy in the sub leaders here, to prepare for the production increase in a few months, with a promise of a share of the status points that
would result. These were largely low status warriors. Otherwise, they would not be stuck here, away from the war they craved to join. They would earn more status points soon, rank high enough to demand to go fight humans, then fail to be effective enough as warriors (as previously demonstrated). They would be sent to some other backwater production world to watch over slaves, still without enough status points to breed and continue their worthless bloodlines. The Great Path was served well in the long term.

  As he ran towards the clanship, his honor guards lined up, he was accompanied by unfinished business, which he would presently conclude in a pleasant (for him) manner. Parkoda had been brought along for the sole purpose of allowing him to see what a successful high status Graka clan warrior Telour had become. He was still rising. He had already fostered thousands of (unknown) offspring, from mating’s with high status females. A fact he had pointed out to Parkoda on occasion during the trip.

  He pretended to thank Parkoda for the status points he had earned from the only raid he had shared with him, when Parkoda was the raid leader. This reminded his opponent of Telour’s clever use of the humans on Koban, which Parkoda had captured, but which had given Telour and Graka clan ascendency over Tanga clan. He had out maneuvered Tanga clan, and arrogant Parkoda in particular, who then made the error of insulting Kanpardi.

  Now, by offering to humiliate and punish Parkoda on behalf of Kanpardi, he had again created a status increase for himself at the expense of Parkoda. It was time for the final degrading step.

  Telour pulled up at the base of the clanship ramp, standing between his two lines of honor guards, and turned to Parkoda. “I have found no indication that any of the soft ones have escaped your custody, despite the lax security I found at their compound. I now must return to report to Tor Gatrol Kanpardi. I must immediately tell him my mission to increase Graka clan’s advance production of clanships for the new invasions will meet or exceed his expectations.

  “Parkoda, you are free to return to the soft Krall compound. If no clanship of any clan arrives to take you there in the next quarter orbit, the migration ships arriving here soon will have ample room to carry you, and can perhaps take you in the direction of one of your clan worlds.”

  Telour had already left instructions with the Graka clan sub leader here that this Tanga clan worm had offended the Tor, and no Graka ships would be “able” to take him off planet. The slow migration ships would be his only alternative transport. When Parkoda eventually returned to his former posting, his second in command would surely have secured the sub leader post permanently. It was one more slap to the muzzle, and Kanpardi would enjoy a good snort at the retelling.

  Parkoda, indignant, had expected to be dropped off on the return trip. It was only a slight detour, considering it would be a seven thousand light-year Jump. “Telour, you took me from my rightful duty station. You are obligated to allow me to return.”

  “I have said exactly that. Return as soon as you can.”

  “I can travel on this ship.” It wasn’t so much a demand as pointing out the obvious.

  “No. Kanpardi was insistent that as soon as I knew the result of my primary mission, I should immediately return to advise him that his plans should proceed. As ordered, I will return directly to Telda Ka to inform him. That Jump would take you four thousand light-years beyond your destination. You require another ship.”

  Telour turned and ran up the ramp; his honor guard closing ranks behind him, cutting off any move by Parkoda try to follow, or to implore Telour to reconsider. However, Parkoda had accepted this new defeat. It had been obvious from the start he would lose a game so stacked against his winning. With his dignity in shreds, he turned and ran back towards the dome even as he heard the portal close and ramp retracted. He heard the fuel pumps activate. That meant they were launching immediately, and Telour probably hoped the thruster blast would “inadvertently” knock him from his feet and deliver painful burns.

  The max performance departure was in keeping with the phony urgency Telour claimed for the return, but it didn’t manage to knock Parkoda down. He ran at top speed to reach the dome entrance overhang, as the flakes of plasma torn tarmac bit into his skin. The trickles of blood halted almost immediately.

  There was no indication yet that his bad day was only just beginning.

  ****

  Thad leaned back again when the clanship Jumped. “Holy crap, Tet. They were in a hurry. I thought I was going to have to start a missile track the way they came off. I was afraid they were coming after us, as an unidentified arrival.”

  Mirikami had leaned forward too, in alarm when the clanship leaped off like that. “I was watching too, even though I was initially focused on the view on the tarmac after we had orbited past them. I think the lone, blue suit Krall that stayed behind received deliberate disrespect by that hurried launch. The ship buttoned up, and almost immediately did a maximum thrust liftoff. That blue suited VIP went up the ramp, followed by the honor guards, and didn’t have time to reach even the third deck before the acceleration came. That should cause the loss of a pilot position, if not the pilot’s life, if he did that without the VIP’s approval.

  “I believe it was done to insult the Krall left standing at the base of the ramp. He ran out there as if he expected to get aboard, but then he was left behind. I don’t know what he did, but he pissed off someone important, who could easily have said goodbye as they left the dome, and not out there on the ramp.”

  Ethan said, “Aunt Maggi claims she understands Krall politics better than human politics. The motives are simpler, and the actions and reactions more direct, she says.”

  “Nearly frying that one’s ass on the Tarmac is certainly direct.” His dad added.

  Mirikami shook his head. “If he had stood there or just walked away slowly he’d be dead. However, running is how the Krall normally prefer to move. I think they wanted him to suffer the indignity of being blown over, or of having to hit top speed to avoid that. He did the latter. I stand by my guess that it was intended to be an insult, not to kill him.”

  “I wonder if there’s something there that we can use to our advantage.”

  “Ethan,” Mirikami smiled at the youngster. “If Maggi were going to engage in negotiations with them, she’d find a way to use it for sure. However, our only negotiating position here is going to be as simple and direct as the Krall prefer. Missiles down their throats.”

  As they were about to lose direct sight of the main dome and its oasis of greenery, Ethan saw something. “Captain, there are five Krall going out to another clanship.”

  “Thad, stay with passive tracking but keep ports for a couple of our missile launchers open. They may just be doing something the Krall leader that just departed told them to do.”

  That turned out probably to be the case, because the clanship stayed suborbital, and flew the several thousand miles to the shipyard dome, which had just appeared over the horizon for the Mark.

  Mirikami decided it was time to move down closer. “OK, staying this high makes for a longer orbital period, and I don't see anything unusual happening. Jakob.”

  “Yes Sir.”

  “Take us down to two hundred miles, and do it before we pass the shipyards this first time around.”

  The ship rotated, and as thrusters fired, Mirikami gave the entire crew an update. “We don’t see any unusual activity and we’re dropping lower, as your monitors will show. A clanship just went to the dome at the shipyards, and…, I can see there was another one already parked there. We’ll not take them out on this pass because I want to see the whole planet at least once. Missile loaders stand by your launchers for reloads. If everything looks good, on the next pass over the main habitat, things will be a bit more interesting.”

  Just as planned for CS2 and the Eight Ball raid, they would knock out all of the clanships on a single, fast, low orbit, and pound the main dome on the same pass. With the lighter warheads, more of the anti-ship missiles would be needed to cause heavy dama
ge to a dome over four thousand feet across and six hundred feet high. For the smaller dome at the shipyard, where the Prada occupied the lower levels, blasting the top Krall-used levels was all they intended to do anyway.

  When they passed the shipyards, they saw five Krall, the same number they saw enter the ship that just landed, make the standard run into the dome.

  Mirikami, dwelling on how open the Krall star systems were to infiltration by trusted spacecraft, thought this month might be the last time such clanships would be able to arrive unexpectedly over a Krall planet, and not be challenged or required to transmit some sort of coded reply to an electronic interrogation. The clanships were capable of this, as the Torki had shown them, but the Krall had rarely used the feature except in cases of authorized interclan warfare. The clanships humans captured would be set up to operate this way when arriving at the Koban system in the future.

  Ethan, still conducting ground surveillance, said. “In the shipyards, there are a half dozen hulls that are half-built or greater, sitting in the cradles, and three more that appear almost ready to fly. I zoomed in on some of the Prada workers, and they are wearing filter masks. The brown-gray haze at low altitudes is thick around the shipyards and foundries. As I look towards the horizon in any direction, I see the haze is everywhere. There’s no reason the mining and other industry couldn’t have been done with scrubbers and filters to keep the air and water cleaner.”

  His father shrugged. “Planets have little value to Krall, you should know that. That’s why they rape, use, and abandon them. Here they simply moved the clan to another cleaner world, and left an outpost to protect their interests and to keep the slaves working.”

  Mirikami was pulling at his lip. “There must be a swath of habitable but ruined worlds anywhere the Krall have been. Have you noticed how few domes, even old abandoned ones we have found on any of their worlds? We have only just started looking at worlds inside the space they control, but I’m seriously wondering how many of the Krall there are? The ones we Mind Tapped didn’t know, since there’s no census. They can breed like fleas, but they may be self-limiting in a sense, with their fixation on culling the weakest and breeding only the best.”